Port of Seattle Approves Lease for Des Moines Creek Business Park

The Port of Seattle Commission on Tuesday (June 5) approved the lease of over 42 acres in the Des Moines Creek Business Park (DMCBP) that will create over 200 construction jobs and 250 permanent jobs for the area.

The City of Des Moines will receive approximately $676,000 in ongoing revenue annually.

“We’re very pleased to have Puget Sound Energy locate in Des Moines,” Mayor Dave Kaplan told The Waterland Blog on May 9. “I think that it helps break the ice on development of the rest of Des Moines Business Park,” Kaplan said.

The DMCBP lot is located south of the airport runways west of 24th Avenue South between South 208th Street and South 216th Street.

The location will accommodate a new operations facility for PSE to consolidate facilities located in the cities of Kent, Renton and SeaTac. The central location within its service area will allow PSE to better service its infrastructure and clients. PSE is the state’s oldest local energy utility. It serves 1.1 million electric customers andmore than 750,000 gas customers in 11 counties.

Kaplan also was quoted as saying:

“The City of Des Moines is very pleased to have an employer with the reputation of Puget Sound Energy as a tenant in the Des Moines Creek Business Park, and is equally pleased to have Benaroya as the developer of the site, The jobs are important for our area, and will help to spur other investments in our City. We are proud of the cooperative efforts we’ve made with the Port of Seattle on this project, and we look forward to additional projects within the Business Park in the future.”

“We thank the Port of Seattle Commission and staff for working to ensure we reached an agreement that will allow Puget Sound Energy to be the first tenant at the Des Moines Creek Business Park,” said Phil Bussey, Puget Sound Energy senior vice president and chief customer officer. “By developing this site, we will be able to consolidate facilities to provide greater operational efficiency and better service to our customers.”

The lease term is for 20 years with 10-year options to extend the initial term to as long as 50 years. PSE will pay initial base rent of approximately $920,000 annually. Every five years the base rent will be adjusted based on the Consumer Price Index. The present value of the annual lease payments over the 20-year term equals approximately $11.4 million. These funds will go to the Airport General Fund to support projects at the airport.

The operations center is initially planned to include a 281,000 square foot warehouse and approximately 21 acres for an outdoor storage yard. A multi-story office building may be built in the future.

The 89-acre DMCBP was originally a combination of residential lots acquired in the City of Des Moines as part of the airport’s noise mitigation program and abandoned street purchased from the City, King County and the Washington State Department of Transportation. The site has been vacant since 1993.

The Port anticipates making the balance of the DMCBP available for long-term lease as the real estate market improves. ​

The agreement was finalized with Puget Sound Energy (PSE) and developer Benaroya Capital to create a new PSE operations center.